Lots of good comments about relative prices of gliders and personal
incomes now and in the past. It's a mix of currency flutuations (we've
been whipsawed in both directions in the U.S.), inflation, the high
proportion of labor in manufacturing costs, etc. It's hard to blame the
manufacturers. Their order books are full. And the marketplace seems to
be working the way it should: i.e., weaker or high-cost manufacturers
exit and new and/or lower-cost makers enter.

A few other factors that I think have changed:

1. Avionics: my instrument panels 30 years ago were full race...with an
altimeter, airspeed, compass, a couple of variometers, an audio, a
radio, and a cardboard final glide calculator. Today one vario is an
expensive flight computer driving a PDA. And now (at the competitive
level) you need at least one IGC-approved flight recorder (read: low
volume, high price).

2. Time: in the "old days," most of us had much more time to save money
through do-it-yourself, ranging from building your own glider to
building a trailer to (in my case) building a couple of RST radios.
Forget that; I don't even have time to do the wing smoothing and other
tweaking I used to do. I'm lucky to be able to fly every few weekends
if the weather is good.

3. Joint ownership: at least in the U.S., I believe there is far more
reluctance to own a competition glider with one or more partners. The
first Libelle 301 I ever saw was owned by three pilots in the midwest
(including one Wil Schuemann). Many guys had partners, the lucky ones
having found someone with absolutely no interest in contest flying. The
easiest way to cut the cost of a glider in half then and now is sharing
the cost. But it seems that a lot more of us (myself included, I'll
admit) are so stressed for time and uncertain about our schedules that
we choose to go it alone (because of my work, I typically "lock in" on
a contest for sure the week before, including the nationals).

I'm also curious as to the relative price of used gliders vs. personal
income. My family was always able to sell one glider for more than we
paid to help finance the next one, whether we were selling a glider we
bought new or used. Unlike what is still true for real estate, that
seems extremely unlikely to happen this time (if I am ever able to
afford/justify a new glider). Much of it is due to currency swings, I
think. But has anyone done any calculations to see how the prices of,
say, five- or ten- or twenty-year-old gliders have behaved vis-a-vis
inflation and/or personal income?

Chip Bearden
ASW 24 "JB"